Henry Ford

How did companies maximize production?

Taylor tried to specify workers to a specific task for efficiency, decline of artisans or specialized labor from this, and the use of assembly line grew. Interchangeability of people for a more streamlined process.

R & D

Government's role in economy

LLC

a type of business with limited liability for the owners with the advantage of not paying corporate income tax (abbreviation)
the company only gives back the money the investor put in, if the co. crashes

US Steel

Carnegie sold his company in 1900 for over 400 million to a new steel combination headed by JP Morgan. The new corporations, United States Steel, was the first billion dollar company and also the largest enterprise in the world, employing 168,000 people and controlling over 3/5th of the nations steel business

Standard Oil

predominant integrated oil producing, transporting, refining, and marketing company. Established in 1870, it operated as a major company trust and was one of the world's first and largest multinational corporations until it was dissolved by the United States Supreme Court in 1911; John D. Rockefeller

New Immigrants

Molly Maguires

members of a secret Irish organization. Many historians believe the Mollies were present in the anthracite coal fields of Pennsylvania in the United States from approximately the time of the American Civil War until a series of sensational arrests and trials in the years 1876−1878. Evidence that the Molly Maguires were responsible for coalfield crimes in the U.S. rests largely upon allegations of one powerful industrialist, and the testimony of one Pinkerton detective. Fellow prisoners also testified against the alleged Molly Maquires, but some believe these witnesses may have been coerced or bribed

Working Conditions

1877 Railroad Strike

Eastern railroad announced a 10% wage cut, which caused workers to stop rail service from Baltimore to St. Louis. Hayes sent troops to calm down the rioting, and it became the first major national labor conflict

Knights of Labor

one of the most important American labor organizations of the 19th century, demanded an end to child and convict labor, equal pay for women, a progressive income tax, and the cooperative employer-employee ownership of mines and factories

Terence Powderley

AFL

American Federation of Labor. A union of skilled workers from one or more trades which focused on collective bargaining (negotiation between labor and management) to reach written agreements on wages hours and working conditions. The AFL used strikes as a major tactic to win higher wages and shorter work weeks.

Samuel Gompers

Haymarket Bombing

In Chicago, home to about 80,000 Knights of Labor and a few hundred anarchists that advocated a violent overthrow of the American government, tensions had been building, and on May 4, 1886, Chicago police were advancing on a meeting that had been called to protest brutalities by authorities when a dynamite bomb was thrown, killing or injuring several dozen people.

Homestead Strike

Pullman Strike

in Chicago, Pullman cut wages but refused to lower rents in the "company town", Eugene Debs had American Railway Union refuse to use Pullman cars, Debs thrown in jail after being sued, strike achieved nothing

Immigration Restriction League

Spatial division in cities

Cities were divided by class, race, and ethnicity. People of the same ethnicity flocked into groups, creating "chinatowns" and the majority poor lived in tenements in cities, often known to have terrible conditions. the small wealthy class lived away from the city, in large country homes. Divisions entirely separated different types of people; Jacob Riis helped expose class differences.

Jacob Riis

A Danish immigrant, he became a reporter who pointed out the terrible conditions of the tenement houses of the big cities where immigrants lived during the late 1800s. He wrote How The Other Half Lives in 1890.

William Tweed

Consumer society

People became increasingly organized around consumption (of goods and leisure), rather than the production of materials and services. Department stores, catalogues, prepared foods, standardized clothing.

Department stores/catalogues

NCL and Florence Kelley

The National Consumers League was formed in 1890 by a woman named Florence Kelley. Their focus was to force retailers to improve working conditions. They encouraged women to buy only products with the League's "white label."

Why leisure now?

Members of the urban middle and professional classes had large blocks of time during which they did not work-evenings, weekends, even paid vacations. Working hours in factories decreased from 70 hours per week to 60 hours per week from 1860 to 1900.